Progress report

Stan_Lite

Stan_Lite

Stan_Lite

Man of Honour
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Apr 2004
Posts
107,330
Location
In bed with your sister
Little progress report on my farm upgrade.

I ordered some bits and pieces to upgrade the farm. I had some bits already (motherboards, memory, PSUs etc.). I got the bits yesterday and started to work. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite according to plan. The first rig I built with the P5W-DH board I had wouldn't work, confirming my suspicion that at least one of the spare boards I had was borked. On to the second rig (965P-DS3) and everything went fine with the build and it fired up fine. Tried to install Windows and it failed about 3/4 of the way through and again and again ........ I tried everything I could think of, different disk, Ubuntu etc but nothing would install. I had been at it for about 8 hours when midnight arrived so I set memtest running overnight and went to bed.

Got up this morning and decided to try a different optical drive so I took the DVD-RW out of my gaming rig and started with that - all went without a hitch. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to OC anywhere near as far as I was hoping but never mind, 3.0Ghz will do for now.

Next was another disappointment, I have a 945GCMX-S2 mATX board which, for some reason, I was convinced would take a quad. It doesn't. I've ordered a couple of GA-P35-DS3L boards and some more RAM (was one set short for some reason) which will arrive tomorrow so I should get the other two quads set up then.

I swapped the G0 Q6600 from the gaming rig with one of the new ones as I was convinced the one in there was a poor clocker - looks like it's the mobo (P5N32-E Sli) which is a poor clocker so I'll probably end up changing that at some point. Bit of a PITA to be honest as it will probably mean a re-install - means cloning HDDs etc :rolleyes:

So the farm at the moment consists of 3 x Q6600s (2 x G0s and 1 x B3), 1 x E6600 and 1 x E6300 with two Q6600s (G0) to follow tomorrow - although I'll still be short 1 set RAM (I was planning on retiring the Duos but can't bring myself to now :o). I'll probably nip out tomorrow some time (depending on when the stuff arrives) and fetch a pair of sticks to put into the E6300 so it can keep running.

Here's my current FahMon:

FahMon.jpg


:D

I'll keep you updated.

Don't get too comfy in that cell Snapshot :p
 
Nice.

In semi-related news. A T7700-based laptop with 4GB RAM arrived on my doorstep this afternoon. Dunno how much I'll run it (the old laptop is barely on at all), but we'll see.
 
nice work - shame about the hassles you've had.

It reminds me that i still have a DS3 P965 board, old case, 1gb of ram lying around!! another cpu and psu and away we go - can't see the missus going for that unless i hide it in the loft!!!:cool::cool:

Also is there any point in folding on a laptop? - i've got a core2duo laptop here(1.5ghz with 2gb of ram) - best options normal client??
 
Try the F12 BIOS for the 965P DS3 if you haven't already done so. It's meant to another 300-400mhz out of a Q6600.
 
Cob said:
Try the F12 BIOS for the 965P DS3 if you haven't already done so. It's meant to another 300-400mhz out of a Q6600.
Click to expand...

First thing I did I'm afraid.

I might be able to get more out of it with more volts. Must be a dodgy stock cooler as it's reading over 70C at full load with only 1.32V (reseated and re-applied AS5 twice already). Once I get a better cooler, I might have a go with more vcore.
 
What cooler you got on it then? Did you set cooling mode to Legacy (I think that's the right one)?

PS - I'd be very interested in your O/C settings on the 965P. Might tweak my E6600 settings as I'll wager you have better settings than me.
 
everything going **** up is part of the fun ;)

On a sepearte note I thought overclocking was an expensive hobby! this folding stuff is even worse :) have spent the last week putting together some old machines :) 300ppd is still 300ppd.. got an only prescot p4 running at 4.2ghz on some way old gigabyte board last night was pretty impressed with that :) and the g/f machine is getting an upgrade as it is now obviously having trouble playing WoW :) told her no way it would play the next expansion got past the old "but we are saving for a wedding arguement" :)
 
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Berserker said:
What cooler you got on it then? Did you set cooling mode to Legacy (I think that's the right one)?

PS - I'd be very interested in your O/C settings on the 965P. Might tweak my E6600 settings as I'll wager you have better settings than me.
Click to expand...

I'm just using the stock Intel cooler but it must be a faulty one. What's legacy cooling mode :confused:

It's headless at the moment as I only have two monitors and the 2405 stays in one place. I'll probably be having a bit of a tweak in a day or two and I'll check my settings then.
 
It's in the BIOS, of course. :/

You've probably already done this but just in case, go to 'PC Health Status' and set 'Smart Fan Control Method' to 'Legacy' and 'Smart Fan Control Mode' to 'PWM'. Will spin the CPU fan up but give it a fighting chance. :)

Would still like to know what settings you're using though as it may give me some pointers to help get some more out of my own systems.
 
Ah, didn't know about that. will have a look on the morrow and will jot down my settings for you whilst I'm there.
 
If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is. Always good fun. I'm quite comfy in cell 6 at the moment and enjoying the view, thank you, but I won't be doing any redecorating..... Should get my two million today then I'll be shutting down one or two of the rigs here so I can have a 'fix it' session too - the two Q6600s are due to get 64-bit XP and I might replace the crappy MSI mobo that the E6300's currently in or put the E6600 in the new mobo and the E6300 in the AB9. Decisions, decisions....
 
That's the sort of thing I do. I swap things around because I think I'll get a few hundred points more by having a particular CPU in a particular mobo - sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't.

Well done in advance for the 2 million tiffy - if my stuff had arrived when it was supposed to, I might have beaten you to it but fate decreed otherwise - c'est la vie.
 
Slightly more successful day today.

Mobos arrived at around noon. Put together the first rig using the Titan Amanda TEC cooler thing I had in the bits box. Got it running at 3.5GHz with 1.425V vcore :cool:

The other one I had to use the stock Intel HSF and was heavily restricted OC-wise by temperatures. Got that one running at 3.24GHz with 1.35V but kinda hot.

Think I'll get a box full of freezer 7s to help with the cooling and get some more MHz out of some of these.

Current FahMon:

FahMon2.jpg


:D
 
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